Cartways Black Market

A long, vaulted gallery punctuated with enormous support columns, the Cartways Black Market is a hidden bazaar of the dark and sinister, the taboo and the forbidden. Several large chandeliers festooned with continual flames give the chamber a garish, flickering light that the vendors and regular patrons don’t seem to mind. The constant murmur of commerce is occasionally punctuated by arguments as flesh, drugs, stolen goods, and precious information is bought and sold. The threat of violence lingers unspoken with each transaction, and when it does erupt, bystanders observewith a detachment bordering on clinical. A single, unspoken rule guides commerce in the market: Keep to your own business and you’ll live longer. Two long aisles contain most merchants’ excuses for storefronts, businesses, and entertainments, with the most powerful claiming places along the chamber’s large center pillars. The Imperial Slave Block exists in a place of uneasy neutrality.